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Breitbart News Profiled Small Businessman Robert Sherrill as a Payday Lending “Success Story”

According to Breitbart News: “The key for Sherrill was a series of short-term loans to cover business expenses when he was starting out. His first was for $250 to cover expenses. He repaid it in two weeks, then took out another loan for his business. He met payroll, purchased equipment and supplies and stayed above water in his business’ formative years with the help of these small loans … Sherrill got the money that kept his business afloat “and may have saved my life” from Advance Financial, his local payday and title loan lender. He didn’t have to produce a lot of collateral. Owning his own business wasn’t held against him. Nor was his prison record. ‘Mine is a true success story, and I owe a great deal of it to the payday lending industry,’ Sherrill told a congressional committee back in February. ‘Without the payday and title loans I was able to get, nothing that I have been able to achieve would have happened.'” [Breitbart News, “CFPB Wants to End Short-Term Loans That Can Help Real People,” 7/11/16]

Breitbart News Failed to Disclose Sherrill’s Conflict of Interest: 80% of His Business Revenue Is from Lenders

Robert Sherrill, Owner of Imperial Cleaning Services, Is A Contractor of Payday Lending Firm Advance Financial — His Company Cleans 57 Of Their Stores and They Account for 80% Of His Business. “Advance Financial will also be forced to stop doing business with many black contractors, one of which is Robert Sherrill, owner of Imperial Cleaning Services. Imperial currently cleans 57 stores for Advance Financial “I have six employees and 80 percent of my business is advance,” said Sherrill. “I can’t clean the stores during the day time, so I come during those wee hours of the morning. Holleman is trying to cripple me “When asked what he thinks of the bill Sherrill said, “He might as well come out and say that this is a direct attack against Advance, because they are the only one open 24 hours. It’s not about payday advance places; it is about this particular company. You need to direct it to who is going to be effected, and that is Advance Financial.” [Nashville Pride, “Metro Councilman Jason Holleman Attacks Black Community with Bill” 1/30/15]

Breitbart News Embraces “Racist Ideas”

According to the non-partisan Southern Poverty Law Center: “Over the past year however, [Breitbart News] has undergone a noticeable shift toward embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the “Alt-Right.” … Breitbart recently published a lengthy defense of the Alt-Right, claiming the white nationalists such as Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor who created the ideology “have been accused of racism,” choosing to ignore the well-documented openly-racist views.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, “Is Breitbart.com Becoming the Media Arm of the ‘Alt-Right’?,” 4/28/16]

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